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Saralyn Fosnight's avatar

I do not get this entire anti- trans thing. How can any of it matter to people who don’t know the children involved? Why has such a personal decision become political? But then, why would I be puzzled. All over the country, politicians, or should I say, Republican politicians, are legislating medical issues that kill people because they are not doctors and do not understand either the human body or medicine.

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Vilja Kainu, LLM, Med. Kand.'s avatar

It’s essential in keeping trans people as a bogeyman. Early transition helps with having less mental anguish and in passing, and how do you know who to target in public life if they pass? How do they know that they are less than, a disgusting freak, if they can just blend in and live like people do? They might think they are human and have rights and deserve respect the same as everyone else, and bigots just can’t have that. Well, they say they want to protect children, but somehow they don’t have any problems with male genital mutilation, or malnourished children… or, indeed kids abused by priests and such.

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Dan T.'s avatar

There is no scientifically valid evidence that early transition reduces suicide; the only real study suggests that it makes no difference. https://mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/27/1/e300940

The differences of sexual development that make sex ambiguous occur in about 1 out of 5500 people; for the remaining 5499, “sex assigned at birth” is just sex, without any need for confusion: male and female. And such things have nothing to do with destroying the bodies of gender nonconforming children.

I believe that having sexual functioning, such as ability to orgasm, and the chance to have children, are important. I think children are specifically poorly qualified to make life-altering decisions about losing them. And bullying their parents with false claims of suicide risk is unconscionable.

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Saralyn Fosnight's avatar

The only people I have ever read about having suicidal thoughts until they were allowed to transition are the children and young adults themselves. I have never come across a single instance of a person ever saying they were bullied into transitioning. You have cited one study; I have read numerous articles about it by the people affected, their families, and their doctors. You seem to assume these young people just make an impulsive decision and their parents happily go along with it. I have met zero parents that would want their kids to change sex without a lot of psychological counseling. No one is ever pushed into sex change surgery. And some, other than taking hormones, either never have it or wait many years before having it.

I have no stake in this discussion either. I’m totally heterosexual and the I’ve had a child who was never anything but a boy. He grew up to be a husband and father and is happy that way. But I have friends whose children or grandchildren are not the same as my kid was.

But I am also a human being. I can’t stand to see people mistreat animals or children, which seems to happen more often in rigid, super religious homes than in places where my friends and I live. Substack seems to attract many survivors of mistreatment at the hands of super religious people. There isn’t a day that passes when I don’t read someone referring to this kind of abuse. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to grow up in a home like that.

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Joanie Wimmer's avatar

Why do you think that transgender people cannot orgasm post gender conforming surgery? Do you even know any transgender people?

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Dan T.'s avatar

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/202111/does-affirmative-treatment-impair-sexual-response-in-trans-youth

“Marci Bowers is the surgeon who treated reality TV star Jazz Jennings, whose life and transition are chronicled in the show I Am Jazz. Describing her treatment of Jennings, Bowers states,“If you’ve never had an orgasm pre-surgery, and then your puberty's blocked, it's very difficult to achieve that afterwards. I consider that a big problem, actually. It's kind of an overlooked problem that in our ‘informed consent’ of children undergoing puberty blockers, we’ve in some respects overlooked that a little bit .... if they’re not able to be responsive as a lover ... how does that affect their long-term happiness?” In her show, Jennings described that she had never had an orgasm.”

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Joanie Wimmer's avatar

I transitioned from male to female as an adult. Dr. Bowers was my surgeon. I certainly am able to orgasm years after my surgery. On the issue of informed consent, Dr. Bowers told me before the surgery that I might not be able to orgasm, that that was a risk associated with the surgery. Deciding to go forward with the surgery was an easy choice for me.

https://marcibowers.com/transfem/dear-colleagues-clients-and-friends/

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Dan T.'s avatar

The topic of the supreme court case, the OP, and my comments, is treatment of minors; your experience, as an adult, is not relevant to that topic. When you were told you might not be able to orgasm, you knew what that meant, and what a sex life is. A child might well not. You could have known what having children would be like; indeed, in various famous case, men with families have transitioned. A child could not.

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Dan T.'s avatar

The lack of evidence that these treatments are in any way “life saving”, combined with their lifelong destruction of the child’s sexual function, and the inability of children to meaningfully consent, does lead to a bit of concern.

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Saralyn Fosnight's avatar

Unfortunately, early transition seems to prevent suicide. Many people who’ve been able to transition talk about gender dysphoria and their suicidal thoughts before they transitioned. Very few of them later regret their decision and wish to go back to the sex with which they were born.

There was a post up several days ago from an endocrinologist about variations in the genetic makeup of sex that was interesting, even though confusing to me. But basically there are people who present naturally as one sex yet their genome shows they are not purely that sex. The doctor’s point was that sex isn’t simple and that there are variations that are more complex than we know.

Not everyone who transitions has sex change surgery either. Some opt to keep their sex organs intact. You may believe that fertility is important but there are plenty of people who do not, even among heterosexuals and homosexuals. I think it’s a private matter.

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